Availability Rules allow you to control what bookings can and can't be made. Depending on your pricing structure you may have a minimum number of nights required, required lead time before arrival date, or any number of other rules. There are several different dimensions of availability rules:
- Minimum Night Restrictions
- Maximum Night Restrictions
- Booking Window
- Changeover Restrictions
- Gap Night Restrictions
- Channel Settings
These rules are all applied for both direct bookings and also channel API integrations. If you've got a non API integrated channel set up via iCal, you'll need to configure any rules on that site separately.
These rules will be applied when a guest is doing a book now through a hosted site or widget. If you're creating a quote for a guest, the system will remind you of the rules but you'll be able to override them and create the quote anyway if you want.
You can set these rules on the property and also override many of these rules for specific periods of time on Seasons or in the Rate Calendar.
Minimum Night Restrictions
The minimum nights rule requires a guest to book at least a certain number of nights when they make a booking. The following rules are available:
- Default Min:
- This rule is the default minimum nights rule. It will apply when it's not overridden by something else.
- During Holidays:
- This rule will be used if the period contains a holiday (as specified in Settings > Holidays).
- During Weekends:
- This rule will be used if the period contains a Friday or Saturday night. Any weekend minimum night property settings will overrule the season's settings.
- During Gaps:
- This rule allows you to override the other rules if there's a gap between bookings where the minimum would otherwise not allow bookings. Say you've got a 7 night minimum rule set, but two people booked such that there's a 5 night gap between the two bookings. Normally that wouldn't be bookable based on the 7 night minimum being enforced. But you could make it bookable using the During Gaps rule. There are two possible settings:
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Allow a booking that fills the entire gap: This will reduce the minimum nights in the gap to the length of the gap so the whole gap must be booked. Using the example above, if you configured the system to Allow a booking that fills the entire gap with a minimum of 3 nights, then the minimum during that 5 night gap would be set to 5 nights. If there was a 3 night gap, the minimum would be set to 3 nights. And a 2 night gap would not be bookable as the minimum in gaps was 3 nights.Use this minimum instead: This will replace the minimum nights with the minimum you set. Using the example above, if you configured the system to Use this minimum instead with a minimum of 3 nights, then the minimum during that 5 night gap would be set to 3 nights.
Users can also change the Minimum Nights on the Rates Calendar.
Maximum Night Restrictions
The maximum nights rule limits the booking so it can't be longer than the specified amount. It's not required, but if you want to keep people from booking more than 14 or 30 nights or what have you, then configure a rule here. Users can also change the Maximum Nights on the Rates Calendar.
Booking Window
The booking window rules allow you to control how far ahead of time bookings are required or allowed to be made. OwnerRez users can set Booking Window Policies by navigating to Properties > [Property Name] > Rules. Scroll down to Booking Window to set the Lead Time prior to arrival and set the Max Days in the Future a guest can book. Property rule defaults for Max Availability are set at 365 days with a Lead Time of 1 day from now (to protect against unintended same-day bookings) to all new properties.
Users can configure these default settings to their preference at any time by navigating to the specific Property > Rules > Booking Window.
Note that channel restrictions still apply.
Even if set to 500+ days in advance in OwnerRez, the Vrbo booking window is limited to 500 days (about 16 months) in advance. The Vrbo calendar will show as greyed out for dates for guests after the 500-day mark. When guests attempt to book a Vrbo property directly from the listing page for 500 days or more (about 16 months) in advance, the traveler will either receive an error message or the calendar will be greyed out and unable to be booked.
The Booking Window rules are summarized nicely on the Rules view page of the property.
Lead Time
- This rule controls how far ahead of arrival the booking must be made. You can allow same-day bookings or require some days of lead time between the booking date and arrival. For further clarification, one-day advanced notice for all bookings does not mean that "check-in is allowed greater than 24 hours from the time the guest books." One day advanced notice does mean "no sooner than tomorrow."
- To make changes, navigate to Properties > the specific Property > Rules > Change > Booking Window > Lead Time.
For example, if your Property's Lead Time is set to the OwnerRez default setting of "1 Day from now," a guest can book a reservation at 11:54 PM the night before to arrive the following (tomorrow) afternoon.
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Airbnb API
If you are using an Airbnb API connection, the Lead Time is controlled in the Airbnb API settings (Settings > Channels > API Integrations > your Airbnb integration > Change > Booking Window & Duration > Lead Time), as any settings in the Property Rules are ignored. This is because Airbnb has a special list of Lead Time options that do not cleanly match what you might enter in the property rule.
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Max Availability
- This rule lets you keep bookings from being made too far ahead of time and the OwnerRez default setting is 365 days. Users can change that rule to allow bookings up to 5 years (1,825 days) in advance maximum.
- To make changes, navigate to Properties > the specific Property > Rules > Change > Booking Window > Max Availability.
Changeover Restrictions
On the Rate Calendar (Settings > Pricing > Rates, or Tools > Rate Calendar), you can select Changeover from the Set Rules dropdown menu; users can determine Arrival, Departure, or Gap rules in one process. In the example below, we selected Thanksgiving Day 2023.
On the Changeover pop-up, we've selected Stay is allowed (no arrival or departure). This selection would allow guests to book and stay over Thanksgiving but not allow a guest to arrive or depart. Click Update.
Gap Night Restrictions
Property
Before you configure your gap night restrictions, be sure to read the Gap Management support article to learn more.
The changeover restrictions can allow you to require gaps between bookings or to keep bookings from creating gaps. You can also only allow arrival/departure on certain days. The following rules are available
- No restriction: Any gaps or no gaps at all are allowed.
- Require gap between bookings: This will require a gap between bookings of a certain number of days. If your cleaning staff needs a day or two between bookings, configure that here. The required gap will show on the rate calendar and on user visible widgets, and be pushed to API channels. It will not show on your internal booking views or be included in iCal exports.
- Disallow gaps of exactly: This setting allows you to disallow gaps of a certain length that you might not be able to book -- usually 1 or 2 nights. So if you have a booking that departs on the 5th, for example, and a disallow gaps of 1, the next booking could arrive either on the 5th or the 7th. It could not arrive on the 6th as that would create a 1 night gap.
- Disallow any gaps that have a length between: This setting allows you to disallow a range of gaps, say 1-3 nights. That would allow adjacent bookings, then not allow bookings that create a 2 or 3 night gap, and allow 4 night gaps. Be very careful when setting a rule like this -- it's easy to make more things unbookable than you would think.
Also, remember the following:
- Gaps are enforced on bookings only.
- Gaps are not enforced on blocks, moved, or modified bookings. They ARE indicated as blocked for direct bookings (via widgets) and via all API connections.
- Nights blocked by gap rules are NOT shown as blocked on internal OwnerRez calendar displays.
- Gaps are NOT included in any iCal calendar exports.
- Gap rules don't override arrival/departure days - if a gap covers a period of time consisting of days when arrival/departure is not allowed, the gap rule won't make it bookable.
To configure Gap Night Restrictions for your property, navigate to your specific Property > Rules > Change > Changeover Restrictions > Gaps. The default is No restriction, which allows adjacent bookings, but you can select whichever gap rules work best for your property.
You can also set the Arrival and/or Departure days that your property will allow, such as requiring Saturday-to-Saturday stays only. By default, all days are allowed—uncheck the ones that you don't want to allow.
Rate Calendar
Alternatively, you can determine your Gap rules for a specific day by navigating to the Rate Calendar (Settings > Pricing > Rates, or Tools > Rate Calendar) and selecting Changeover from the Set Rules dropdown menu. In the example below, we selected Thanksgiving Day 2023.
Users can choose to require a Gap by selecting Gap required (no same-day changeover) or any other rule configuration by selecting It's complicated:
In our Thanksgiving day example, the Rate Calendar now shows No arrivals or departures allowed.
If users add a Gap rule, Gap required (no same-day changeover), to a night allowing guests to stay but not allow any changeovers, the Rate Calendar will display the Gap rule as follows.
And if a booking comes in that departs on that day, the Gap rule remains in effect by not allowing arrivals until the following day.
If that night is booked as part of an extended stay, the Gap still appears on the Rate Calendar.
Channel Settings
Many listing channels allow you to configure specific booking windows and duration rules directly within the API connection settings.
For Airbnb, see the Booking Window & Duration section of the Airbnb Setup & Connecting support article.